Nikolai Gogol
53 quotes
Biography
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin.
"The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes."
"I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone."
"Two turtle doves will show theeWhere my cold ashes lieAnd sadly murmuring tell theeHow in tears I did die"
"What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen."
"I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco."
""Turn around, son! What a funny figure you are! Are those priests' cassocks you are wearing? And do they all go about like that at the academy?" With these words old Bulba greeted his two sons who had been studying at the Kiev college and had come home to their father."
"And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him."
"When the priest went in, he stopped short at the sight of this defamation of God's holy place, and dared not serve the requiem on such a spot. And so the church was left forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, was overgrown with forest trees, roots, rough grass and wild thorns, and no one can now find the way to it."
"In the course of reading he became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!""
"I shall laugh my bitter laugh.<!--the original text is reported to be "Горьким смехом над собой посмеюсь"-->"
"...it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life."
"Dogs are clever fellows; they know all about politics [...]"
"The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he."
"Marchember 86. Between day and night."
"No date. The day had no date."
"[P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea."
"To tell the truth, I often felt uneasy when I thought of the excessive brittleness and fragility of the moon. The moon is generally repaired in Hamburg, and very imperfectly. It is done by a lame cooper, an obvious blockhead who has no idea how to do it. He took waxed thread and olive-oil—hence that pungent smell over all the earth which compels people to hold their noses. And this makes the moon so fragile that no men can live on it, but only noses. Therefore we cannot see our noses, because they are on the moon."
"All the world knows that France sneezes when England takes a pinch of snuff."
"It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry."
"Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?"
"The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities."
"I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter."
"The sergeant's widow told you a lie when she said I flogged her. I never flogged her. She flogged herself."
"What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!"
"The gentleman lolling back in the chaise was neither dashingly handsome nor yet unbearably ugly, neither too stout nor yet too thin; it could not be claimed he was old but he was no stripling, either. His arrival in the town created no stir and was not marked by anything out of the ordinary."